Family ties: Freshman Cameron Haughawout digs deep into his roots
The cover of Time magazine and a great-grandmother who painted clock faces with radioactive paint: What do these two things have in common? Freshman Cameron Haughawout.
Haughawout (pronounced “How-it”) is a budding genealogist -- and is lucky that he has some amazing branches on his family tree to fuel his love of history.
The cover of Time magazine from February 24, 1967, has a portrait of Richard Helms, the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. According to Haughawout, “He was very controversial in his time and I can’t say for sure if it’s a pleasure to have his name in our family tree or not.” Helms, a reporter that covered the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, was married to Haughawot’s great-grandmother’s sister. While in Berlin, he interviewed Adolph Hitler. During WWII, Helms was recruited to join the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and was basically a spy. As WWII was ending with Hitler dead, Helms was able to nab a piece of Hitler’s desk. “His son (my grandmother’s cousin) still has the piece of the desk to this day,” shared Haughawout. Helms stayed in the intelligence-gathering business and eventually became head of the CIA during both President Lyndon Johnson’s and President Richard Nixon’s presidencies.
However, the family stories don’t stop there. “My great grandmother was a Radium Girl in the 1920s, which is a whole story in itself,” explained Haughawout. Radium Girls were women who worked in factories in the 1920s using paint made with radium to paint the faces of watches so they would glow in the dark. At that time, radium was not fully understood and no one predicted the harmful effects of being exposed to it on a daily basis. “Long story short, her company shut down once people figured out how dangerous and scary it was,” said Haughawout. Many of the factory workers died or suffered horrible long-term effects of being exposed to radium.
Haughawout said he was motivated by his love of history to dig deep into his roots. “After I figured out our family has an interesting history, I decided to do my own research and even continue the research that had been done decades ago,” he said.
Haughawout explained, “My family’s last name is very complicated. It traces back to 1300 Holland.” Because of the unique name, the origin and meaning of it has been the subject of research over the years. In fact, there was a report from the 1930’s that looked in depth into his last name but, according to Haughawout, “They didn’t know what it meant either, even after extensive research.”
Haughawot’s family and his determination to explore his family’s history is certainly not the norm for an average teenager. “History has always been a passion of mine,” he explained. “Something about it just … clicks, which is quite weird, because it doesn’t happen often with other things like Biology or Algebra. To be honest, I don’t really know why I got so motivated to do it; maybe it was my passion for history or maybe it was just pure curiosity. Whatever happened, I am ever so grateful for it because I wouldn’t know half of the stuff I wouldn’t know today.”
Story by Luke Amos